I got the question, why I did not react to this earlier. Well, here is what happened. First of all, I trusted the doctor not to hurt me. Is that being gullible? In hindsight, yes. But everyone involved in the surgery acted nice long after surgery was and everyone told me everything went great during surgery. I have never done this before and there were no obvious signs that they were hiding anything. I come from a country where the trust level is high, even lawyers are considered trustworthy and doctors definitely tops the list of trustworthy professions. It is inconceivable to me that doctors that swear to do no harm first, would not at least be truthful about how the operation went. Of course, all of this may not come down to deception but rather incompetence and lack of prudence on the doctor's part. Regardless, it is unacceptable.
The first x-rays we took, were taken from the front and the side. I contacted the doctor and asked him to send me them the day after. He then actually sent me femur x-rays of another person. I got back to him and he apologized and then he only sent me a picture of his computer screen where he had my frontal x-ray. But this problem is really only visible from the side, so I never saw anything that would alarm me. Truthfully, I was not looking for anything wrong, since he assured me everything went perfect during operation and I trusted him. I was also embarrassed on his part for sending me the wrong file, so I did not press it any further.
When the second x-rays were taken, for some reason, they were only taken from the front. Again, I trusted the doctor to tell me the truth at all times. I am not big on conspiracy theories, so I found an innocent explanation for it. I even thought it was positive since x-rays are not exactly healthy for you.
The third x-rays were taken from the front and the side. Interestingly, before sending me the x-rays, the doctor called me up and told me that I had reached 6 cm and because of premature consolidation I should double the distraction. We actually spoke for several minutes on the phone, until I finally convinced him that he had me confused with another patient (again!). He apologized and 3 days later, after reminding him, I got the x-rays. But the side x-ray was not taken with the tibia flat on the surface as the ones I posted at the beginning of the thread. Instead, they were taken at an angle where most of the tibia was covered by the external device. So you could not, for instance, see the posterior part of the bone at all. Because of this angle, the misalignment in the front did not show as well as in my latest x-rays. It is also probably so that the misalignment has increased the more I distracted. Still, I asked him about it, and he told me that it was not a problem, because new bone formation will correct the align.
The fourth x-rays, taken less than a week ago, I did at a completely different clinic. This time the side x-rays were taken with the foot and tibia completely flat on the side. It revealed everything. Also because I did the x-ray somewhere else, I also got another doctor's opinion for the first time. I have asked my doctor to comment on them, but the only thing he said was that I have reached my distraction goal on both legs, that the distraction is even and that new bone formation was good (!). He said he was busy with other things when I got hold of him, but promised to come back to me this Monday. There was no point in me pushing him at that point. However, as of today, Wednesday, he has still not commented on the x-rays. The only thing he said, after I contacted him on Monday through IM, is that they would arrange to remove my external fixator.
Author
Topic: How fked am I? What to do about tibial misalignment? (Read 9183 times)